Keeping it Together: Why this couple started swinging

Simon and Carolyn Hopper – a Southampton, U.K. couple – always had a healthy sex life. When Simon's mom got sick, though, they began traveling to see her before she died in 2016 and listened to plenty of podcasts and eventually started watching documentaries about sex and polyamory. The pair later took a vacation and joked about the other couple by the side of the pool lathering each other up with sun block. Were they swingers? They certainly acted overtly romantic.

"You just don't really see that so much over here in the U.K.," Carolyn Hopper, 50, says.

Hi, my name is David Oliver, one of Paste BN's wellness reporters. And I'm here to talk to you about swinging. Covering relationships styles is one of my favorite parts of this job. Equal parts fascinating and fun.

Back to the Hoppers: "When we came home, we started talking about whether this is something that we wanted to explore because (Carolyn) always said that (she was) bisexual, but we'd never looked into that as a thing that we could do together or whatever," Simon says. He went into research-mode to learn everything he could about non-monogamy.

The Hoppers now host the aptly-titled Bed Hoppers podcast. But they want you to know their view of swinging goes beyond sex. "Our approach is very much about creating friendships with benefits," says Simon Hopper, 46.

More and more swingers have been vocalizing this mindset, insisting they are not a seductive, sensationalized monolith.

"Often the people that you meet, you don't always have sex with them, you just make really good friends, and you can be open with them," Simon Hopper adds.

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